NetEase

NetEase, Inc. ( ) is a Chinese Internet technology company. Its businesses include video games, news aggregation, music streaming, advertising, email, and e-commerce. It was founded by Ding Lei in June 1997¹. The company provides online services with content, community, communications, and commerce. It operates a news aggregator website at news.163.com and an associated app. NetEase has an on-demand music-streaming service (NetEase Cloud Music). Video games the company has developed include, Fantasy Westward Journey, Identity V, Eggy Party, Sword of Justice(Justice online), Onmyoji, Tianxia III, Heroes of Tang Dynasty Zero, Ghost II, Marvel Rivals, and Destiny: Rising. It created an Android emulator for PC, called MuMu Player. The company also owns multiple pig farms. In 2023, the company revenue was US$14.6 billion.

NetEase, Inc. ( ) is a Chinese Internet technology company. Its businesses include video games, news aggregation, music streaming, advertising, email, and e-commerce. It was founded by Ding Lei in June 1997. The company provides online services with content, community, communications, and commerce. It operates a news aggregator website at news.163.com and an associated app. NetEase has an on-demand music-streaming service (NetEase Cloud Music). Video games the company has developed include, Fantasy Westward Journey, Identity V, Eggy Party, Sword of Justice(Justice online), Onmyoji, Tianxia III, Heroes of Tang Dynasty Zero, Ghost II, Marvel Rivals, and Destiny: Rising. It created an Android emulator for PC, called MuMu Player. The company also owns multiple pig farms. In 2023, the company revenue was US$14.6 billion.

History

Ding Lei founded the company in China in June 1997 with just three employees. It sold e-mail servers to internet access providers before developing its own websites that focused on bilingual e-mail and chat rooms, such as the popular 163 email domain. It introduced China's first free e-mail service, first online community, and first personalized information service. After two funding rounds, the company raised nearly $20 million by the end of 1999. In 1999, NetEase hosted an online literature contest refereed by Wang Meng, Liu Xinwu, and Mo Yan, which contributed to the early growth of internet literature in China. On July 1, 2000, the company was floated on the American stock market with an initial public offering on Nasdaq. 4.5 million shares were issued at $15.5 per share. The IPO was underwritten by Merrill. During this time, China had made it difficult for Chinese internet companies to reach the Western market. Western investors also remained hesitant to invest in Chinese tech companies. This caused the IPO to be delayed several months and the stock initially underperformed. Several top executives left the company in June 2001 when it was discovered its sales data may have been misreported. This took place while NetEase was in the midst of buy-out talks with i-Cable Communications. Takeover talks ended soon after. By 2003, Netease had received investments from Softbank, ING Baring, Goldman Sachs, Techpacific.com, and News Corporation. It had 1.7 million registered users on its email service and generated over four million page views each day. It hired 200 people in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. In August 2005, NetEase announced it would shut down its MP3 service due to the proliferation of pirating. Its blog service was launched in September 2006. In December 2007, the company officially launched its own search engine, Youdao, to replace its partnership with Google since 2000. It went on to develop a series of applications under the brand, including a shopping assistant, Youdao dictionary, and more. NetEase was China's second most popular Google search term that year, behind rival Sina. NetEase's official website address is 163.com. It was attributed to the past when Chinese internet users had to dial "163" to access the Internet, before the availability of broadband. In January 2011, the company announced the launch of a new online luxury goods shopping platform, L.163.com. Said platform was later shut down in December of that year. NetEase launched Lofter, an online forum for various internet subcultures, in August 2011. It has gone on to be one of the most popular platforms for fan fiction in China. In 2018, NetEase Blog was shut down, with users instructed to transfer their content to Lofter. In March 2012, the official name of the company was changed from NetEase.com, Inc to NetEase, Inc. In April, the company began testing a restaurant recommendation mobile app called "Fan Fan". In October 2013, Coursera announced a partnership with NetEase to launch Coursera Zone, a Chinese-language web portal. NetEase launched an online course platform with educational content in 2014. Tencent sued NetEase alleging copyright infringement in 2014. It used the leverage from the suit to convince the company to sublicense music rights. The resulting sublicensing arrangement became a model used by other online music platforms in China. In 2015, the company launched Yanxuan, an e-commerce platform. In January 2015, NetEase announced the launch of Kaola.com, a cross-border e-commerce platform that focused on selling goods from overseas merchants, to compete directly with Alibaba and JD.com. By 2016, its shares had increased by 200% over the previous three years. By 2017, NetEase was the largest provider of free e-mail services in China, with over 940 million users since 2017. The company also ran 188.com and 126.com. In 2019, the company sold off Kaola.com to Alibaba for $2 billion. NetEase carried out a secondary listings on the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing in June 2020. In August 2020, NetEase announced a capital and business alliance with anime studio Satelight. In November 2022, the company announced it had invested in Norwegian fitness startup PlayPulse. In March 2023, NetEase launched the Anici anime brand, making a variety of animation for various partners.

Music streaming

In April 2013, NetEase launched a music streaming service called NetEase Cloud Music. In 2017, it received enough funding to be valued at over $1 billion, receiving unicorn status. In December 2017, NetEase signed a licensing agreement with Kobalt Music Group, gaining access to over 600,000 songs in its catalog. While rival Tencent held licensing deals with the big three record labels, NetEase focused on independent artists. By 2018, over 70,000 independent artists had uploaded over 1.2 million songs to the platform. In November 2018, NetEase signed a non-exclusive partnership with indie label Merlin Network. in September 2019, Alibaba announced it had invested $700 million to gain a minority stake in NetEase Cloud Music. The service surpassed 800 million registered users by the end of 2019 a 200 million increase from the year before. In 2020, NetEase entered into licensing agreements with Warner Chappell Music and Universal Music Group, giving users access to the publishers' catalog. In May 2021, NetEase entered into a direct digital distribution relationship with Sony Music Entertainment. NetEase spun off its music streaming business as a separate company in August, listing it on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

NetEase Comics

In 2015, the company launched NetEase Comics to focus on the comic book business. In 2017, NetEase signed a collaboration deal with Marvel Comics to publish comics in China and create Chinese superheroes, including Swordmaster and Aero. By 2018, its online platform had published more than 2,000 comic book series and 40 million registered users. However, at the end of the year, NetEase sold its comics business to Bilibili while retaining the copyright to its Marvel series.

Chinese government regulation

In October 2020, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered NetEase to undergo "rectification" and temporarily suspend certain comment functions, after censors found inappropriate comments on the news app.

Former studios

Strategic investments

Licensed online games

Three-year agreement to license Overwatch in PRC Agreement to license Minecraft and the pocket edition in China Operated the Chinese third-party Minecraft Hypixel server, which was shut down on 30 June 2020 Assumed the publishing of Eve Online in the Chinese market in October 2018

Game technology

NetEase develops two in-house game engines for some video games: Messiah Engine and NeoX.

Pig farming

In 2009, NetEase founder Ding Lei announced his intention to modernize pig farming in China. The company's agricultural affiliate Weiyang set up a pig farm in Anji county, Huzhou, Zhejiang province in 2011. The state of the art facility included tracking sensors, data analysis, soothing music, artificial intelligence, and Wi-Fi. The public could also track the pigs online. In November 2016, the company held an online auction that sold three of its Jeju Black pigs for a total of $75,000. Since the meat has gone to market, NetEase has sold it on the company's Yanxuan e-commerce platform. Meituan Dianping, Sinovation Ventures, and JD.com invested in the endeavor in 2017. By 2018, the facility was overseeing the rearing and slaughter of 20,000 organic free-range hogs each year. In October 2017, the company announced that it had established a second farm in Gao'an, Jiangxi. NetEase announced in September 2019 that it would invest 1.5 billion yuan ($211 million) to build a pig farm in Shaoxing.

References

External links

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1378306898 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.